Comments on: WILL YOUNG – “Light My Fire”http://freakytrigger.co.uk/popular/2017/11/will-young-light-my-fire/
Lollards in the high church of low cultureWed, 19 Dec 2018 08:29:37 +0000hourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.9.6By: Lee Saundershttp://freakytrigger.co.uk/popular/2017/11/will-young-light-my-fire/comment-page-2/#comment-2229898
Sat, 03 Mar 2018 20:32:50 +0000http://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=30463#comment-2229898I’ll mention this here as Ant & Dec were discussed here, and indeed Saturday Night Takeaway (not just because A&D had their biggest hit at the time when this was #1 but because the series began on 8 June 2002). The show celebrated its 100th episode tonight and was heavy on the 2002 nostalgia. The opening titles being those of the first series, Sophie Ellis-Bextor doing the viewers’ karaoke section, Win the Ads comprising the products from the ad break of the first ever episode, with the jackpot question being who performed on the first episode (Gareth Gates), among other things. My memory records 2002 pretty well and it was honestly a joy watching it.

It did end with a variety-performance style End of the Show Show of Bring Me Sunshine. Reminded me of how Saturday Night Takeaway has now lasted 16 years, whereas The Morecambe & Wise Show sadly only managed 15.

]]>By: Lee Saundershttp://freakytrigger.co.uk/popular/2017/11/will-young-light-my-fire/comment-page-2/#comment-2217682
Sat, 16 Dec 2017 20:25:26 +0000http://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=30463#comment-2217682Playing Dario G’s Carnival de Paris has led me to consider (again) how many World Cup tracks were released as singles here in 1998 (at least 15, I’m pretty sure). Compare that with 2002 where the number is vastly inferior. There’s the aforementioned We’re on the Ball, and also DJ Otzi’s Hey Baby remix but I can’t even think of anything else. Also compare the amount of World Cup compilations there was in 1998 to 2002.
]]>By: Edhttp://freakytrigger.co.uk/popular/2017/11/will-young-light-my-fire/comment-page-2/#comment-2216487
Mon, 11 Dec 2017 02:26:58 +0000http://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=30463#comment-2216487I have just been watching on Netflix the Grammy-winning Doors documentary with narration by Johnny Depp, ‘When You’re Strange’. If you are someone who is pretty confident that a Grammy-winning Doors documentary narrated by Johnny Depp will be waiting for you in the Ninth Circle of Hell, I am not going to tell you you should watch it. In all honesty, it does not do an enormous amount to confound your expectations about what you’ll get from a Grammy-winning Doors documentary with narration by Johnny Depp.

But what is clear from the early footage – before the drink and drugs took their toll – is just how deeply Morrison and the camera loved each other. And when you see him talk to fans, Sugarman’s lines about him being warm, gentle, clownish do not seem so crazy. Again, before the drink and drugs had really had a chance to do their thing.

]]>By: enitharmonhttp://freakytrigger.co.uk/popular/2017/11/will-young-light-my-fire/comment-page-2/#comment-2215704
Wed, 06 Dec 2017 16:33:25 +0000http://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=30463#comment-2215704The Doors’ cultural capital remains high in this household, where it never really delined. I don’t think I’m either a “noise egghead” or a “pop kid”, and I don’t think pop kids ever had much time for them, not when they were in their pomp anyway; subsequently I’ve encountered some surprisingly young folks keeping the vigil at Père Lachaise.

Tom made his distaste for my favourite band known very early in this tale. That’s fine Tom, each to his own, and I guess you had to be there. That’s a long time ago now, and there’s not much left for me in Popular but I’m still here, feeling my age now and getting creaky, and looking forward to the tale eating its tail very soon now, unless this is something being approached asymptotically without ever arriving.

]]>By: pˆnk s lord sükråt cunctørhttp://freakytrigger.co.uk/popular/2017/11/will-young-light-my-fire/comment-page-2/#comment-2215691
Wed, 06 Dec 2017 15:20:59 +0000http://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=30463#comment-2215691further to my suggestion that JM is less pompously serious than subsequent generations have taken him to be, in this letter telling a fan of his death, from a v.young danny sugarman (their teenage manager and later biographer):

key line: “the soul of a clown”

]]>By: Tomhttp://freakytrigger.co.uk/popular/2017/11/will-young-light-my-fire/comment-page-2/#comment-2213347
Tue, 28 Nov 2017 13:13:23 +0000http://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=30463#comment-2213347EPG: This is a bit unfair, if only that the filter of the project doesn’t let that many women’s voices *uncontrolled* by men through. When they appear – eg Madonna, Sinead, Kate Bush – I reckon they’ve been given a fair shake. (Of course you could say my choice to do this as a project at all is telling!)
]]>By: EPGhttp://freakytrigger.co.uk/popular/2017/11/will-young-light-my-fire/comment-page-2/#comment-2213161
Mon, 27 Nov 2017 23:47:23 +0000http://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=30463#comment-2213161There’s no outside the canon and Popular is an attempt to preserve a canon from a decade ago: broadly, womens’ voices controlled by men, from ABBA to Sugababes and who knows thence but Beyonce fits well. Now we know that ten years later, the kids prefer soulful boys like the Drakebiebersheeran continuum, but maybe e-commerce just means men who write have given way to girls who buy. As for this song, I didn’t know this song existed. It’s the last #1 before the first #1 I bought at the time of its oneness.
]]>By: Mark Mhttp://freakytrigger.co.uk/popular/2017/11/will-young-light-my-fire/comment-page-2/#comment-2213151
Mon, 27 Nov 2017 22:22:36 +0000http://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=30463#comment-2213151Re34: Like many (most?) internet memes, that B v Queen one seems to the people who share it a crushing win, but actually amounts to nowt more than ‘Hey, this is the team I support and because I support them, we’re the best.’

Re33: To me, any cultural canon = a list of stuff that is utterly defined by the tastes and politics of the time it is assembled but that its compilers delude themselves is carved in stone and represents some totally non-existent timeless qualities. Even in the case of Shakespeare, who has probably been in more than he’s been out over the centuries, the plays that are considered his best have varied wildly over time.

]]>By: Edward Stillhttp://freakytrigger.co.uk/popular/2017/11/will-young-light-my-fire/comment-page-2/#comment-2213142
Mon, 27 Nov 2017 21:16:03 +0000http://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=30463#comment-2213142I don’t have much to say about this song, original or covers. I’ve tried but it just doesn’t speak to me on any level.

I will say however that Takeover is absolutely, absolutely fantastic. There was a vogue for sampling heavy 70s rock riffs at the time, but this was by far the cleverest use of it (maybe a couple of early Kano songs come close for me). The threat of the rap was underscored by the dread of that yelping guitar perfectly. It really shows how a complementary production can elevate a song*

*Just double-checked and it was indeed produced by Kanye West.. deal with that as you may.

]]>By: AMZ1981http://freakytrigger.co.uk/popular/2017/11/will-young-light-my-fire/comment-page-2/#comment-2213032
Mon, 27 Nov 2017 11:31:20 +0000http://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=30463#comment-2213032I suppose as fashions and tastes change; some classic bands go into to vogue and others out of it, and then things shift again. As a proud classic rock fan (who does his best to keep up with what’s current as well) now in his mid thirties I’ve found my own tastes chopping and changing depending on the cultural weather. At present the Beatles are not quite the touchstone they once were (at least not directly) compared to the Rolling Stones. Led Zeppelin I think are quite influential at the moment but at one point they seemed quite dated. Dire Straits were once the epitome of dad rock but many young guitarists now study their technique.

The Doors are an acquired taste and there a few hugely influential bands who do nothing for me (my opinions on the Smiths would get me lynched in some quarters).

One does try not to be snobby about other genres but I think most of us have seen the meme comparing Bohemian Rhapsody with a (non bunnied) Beyonce song. But I go off topic …

]]>By: Edhttp://freakytrigger.co.uk/popular/2017/11/will-young-light-my-fire/comment-page-2/#comment-2212973
Mon, 27 Nov 2017 06:15:20 +0000http://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=30463#comment-2212973@29 That’s a very good point. People sometimes talk about the pop canon as though it’s an immutable thing, like a university Great Books class, but in fact it is (was?) always changing to suit the needs of the moment. In 1985 the NME staff voted What’s Going On as the Greatest Album Ever, and it was clear that the taste-makers now wanted something quite different from The Doors’ gruff adolescent pomposity.
]]>By: lonepilgrimhttp://freakytrigger.co.uk/popular/2017/11/will-young-light-my-fire/comment-page-2/#comment-2212830
Sun, 26 Nov 2017 20:16:48 +0000http://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=30463#comment-2212830I used to run a trip to Paris from the early 1990s onwards for my A Level Art students and certainly for the first few years there was a demand from many to visit Jim’s grave so clearly The Doors retained some credibility with the yoof for a while.
]]>By: Mark Mhttp://freakytrigger.co.uk/popular/2017/11/will-young-light-my-fire/comment-page-2/#comment-2212302
Thu, 23 Nov 2017 21:52:17 +0000http://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=30463#comment-2212302Re30: The Doors are hardly unique among their peer group in a) cranking out lots of music in a short space of time* and b) having something of an audience 50 years on. Some would argue that the second part of that is precisely the problem: we’re blighted by the Baby Boomers and their legacy.

I don’t think any of us are arguing that there aren’t a lot of people who like The Doors. Emphatically, there are a lot of people who like The Doors, many of them – I suggest on purely anecdotal evidence – Dutch or Italian. What I don’t see is why the fact that lots of people like The Doors proves anything other than lots of people like The Doors.

As for the final part of your argument, predicting what anyone will or will not be discussing in (x) number of years is and always will be a mug’s game. (But as it happens, there’s certainly plenty of nostalgia for ’90s and ’00s RnB so far…)

*Don’t get me wrong: I fully applaud the work ethic and productivity of pre-1970s acts.

]]>By: AMZ1981http://freakytrigger.co.uk/popular/2017/11/will-young-light-my-fire/comment-page-1/#comment-2212295
Thu, 23 Nov 2017 21:22:00 +0000http://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=30463#comment-2212295Surely there was a resurgence in interest in the Doors in 1991 when the biopic was released and Light My Fire finally went top ten in the UK?

I really don’t understand why there is so much Doors bashing on this thread. Surely the fact that we’re even having this discussion fifty years after their debut album was released is a testament to their influence. Yes, not everything they did was great but they released six albums in five years despite a singer living a lifestyle that would have appalled Amy Winehouse. Most bands today would be considered prolific if they managed three albums in six years.

I’ve been waiting for a chance to say this and it might be my moment. In the popular years ahead we’re going to meet a lot of tepid, tedious (to my ears anyway) RnB. Will people be discussing that in fifty years time (particularly as we’re over ten years distant now).

]]>By: swanstephttp://freakytrigger.co.uk/popular/2017/11/will-young-light-my-fire/comment-page-1/#comment-2212140
Thu, 23 Nov 2017 03:08:02 +0000http://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=30463#comment-2212140@8, Ed. My guess is that no meteor is needed to explain the decay of The Doors’ reputation after about 1985. Rather, I suspect that what went on is just regression to the standard interest decay (from their initial boom level in 1967-1971) after a 1979/1980 bubble of special interest in The Doors slowly deflated. The use of The Doors’ ‘The End’ in Apocalypse Now (1979) and the publication of lurid Morrison Bio. No One Gets Out Of Here Alive (1980) inflated the bubble, and the near simultaneous arrival of a range of doomy-sounding bands stoked it further. I knew high school bands in 1981 that segued from Joy Division’s ‘Wilderness’ or U2’s ‘I Will Follow’ into ‘Riders On The Storm’ and back again. Nobody would think of doing that (let alone think it was cool) at any other time (except maybe 2002 or whenever Interpol had their brief moment in the sun).
]]>By: Edhttp://freakytrigger.co.uk/popular/2017/11/will-young-light-my-fire/comment-page-1/#comment-2212030
Wed, 22 Nov 2017 14:19:15 +0000http://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=30463#comment-2212030@8 That mix of noise eggheads and pop kids in the Doors’ fanbase helped them survive the great Punk extinction event. When I was a boy, in the early 80s, they were officially one of the very few Old Bands It’s OK To Like, along with the Velvets and the Beatles (White Album only). I guess the closest Brit equivalents in terms of their subcultural niche would have been Bowie and Roxy Music.

What meteor hit in the 80s that wiped them out of the pantheon, never to be reinstated?

The closest we came to a rebound in the Doors’ cultural capital value must have been 2000-01, when we had Takeover preceded by this, which I think of as Norman Cook’s last great tune:

I wonder if that is somewhere there in the DNA of Will Young picking LMF as a song choice shortly afterwards.

]]>By: Bazhttp://freakytrigger.co.uk/popular/2017/11/will-young-light-my-fire/comment-page-1/#comment-2211869
Tue, 21 Nov 2017 15:00:05 +0000http://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=30463#comment-2211869Does Tizer still exist? I could murder one now.
]]>By: Ronniehttp://freakytrigger.co.uk/popular/2017/11/will-young-light-my-fire/comment-page-1/#comment-2211725
Mon, 20 Nov 2017 17:15:28 +0000http://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=30463#comment-2211725It is no surprise to me that the description of various covers omits Stevie Wonder’s version, which is surprisingly awful.
]]>By: swanstephttp://freakytrigger.co.uk/popular/2017/11/will-young-light-my-fire/comment-page-1/#comment-2211582
Mon, 20 Nov 2017 00:50:58 +0000http://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=30463#comment-2211582Doors, 10 (not to everyone’s taste but come on!)
Jose. F, 9 (one of the best acoustic covers ever)
Will Y., 2 or 3 (inferior, omittable-from-musical-history-without-loss version of Jose F.; irritating video).
]]>By: Andrew Farrellhttp://freakytrigger.co.uk/popular/2017/11/will-young-light-my-fire/comment-page-1/#comment-2211474
Sun, 19 Nov 2017 12:35:51 +0000http://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=30463#comment-2211474The Play What I Wrote is also the play what a friend’s cousin wrote, so I went to see it on a trip over to London. It’s basically a two-hander starring an existing double act, but they have a special guest in the second half for five minutes starring in the titular play. We got Ian McKellan the time I saw it, which lightly dampened my excitement at seeing him passing by when I got out of the tube next to the theater.

Which is all to say, by that stage, Gareth Gates was already a special guest on a par with Fiennes / Richardson / McKellan.

]]>By: Shiny Davehttp://freakytrigger.co.uk/popular/2017/11/will-young-light-my-fire/comment-page-1/#comment-2211297
Sat, 18 Nov 2017 19:10:20 +0000http://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=30463#comment-2211297I remember Friends Like These! And, to complete the England tie-in, their successor as host of that show was Ian Wright.

Apparently the 2001 “celebrity special” was Steps vs Damage. I had completely forgotten the latter existed.

Will was definitely sold as a more enduring and older-skewing “product,” as the biz might put it – more Radio 2 than Radio 1. Which, itself, was arguably a bit of a bold move for a gay man at that point.

]]>By: ThePensmithhttp://freakytrigger.co.uk/popular/2017/11/will-young-light-my-fire/comment-page-1/#comment-2211269
Sat, 18 Nov 2017 16:50:34 +0000http://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=30463#comment-2211269#20 – I seem to vaguely remember that Paul McCartney debacle now. I think the great fall off the cliff that Hear’Say were experiencing at that time, to the point they were already being referred to in the past tense before they had actually split was still colouring many people’s perceptions over many of those who’d had success after Pop Idol/Popstars.

I think what immediately made Will stand out and seem like some one who was in it for the long run was really down to the audience Simon Fuller steered him towards courting. In their first year, Gareth was everywhere – Pepsi deals, a cameo in S Club’s movie, a gazillion features a week about him in Smash Hits (they even made November 7th, the date his first album was released, as International Gareth Day) – so far, so 00s male popstar.

Will on the other hand, whilst doing the same CD:UK/TOTP slots Gareth was appearing on, was also doing Parkinson, in depth pieces with Neil McCormick at The Telegraph, and – in a first sign of his thesp sensibilities that have remained a strong element of his career to date – he did a cameo turn in ‘The Play What I Wrote’, a tribute to Morecambe and Wise with Ralph Fiennes and Natasha Richardson in the West End. His quirks played to his strengths the further removed from his Pop Idol win he got.

]]>By: Lee Saundershttp://freakytrigger.co.uk/popular/2017/11/will-young-light-my-fire/comment-page-1/#comment-2211248
Sat, 18 Nov 2017 14:38:11 +0000http://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=30463#comment-2211248#19 and 20: Many years ago I created the Wikipedia article for We’re on the Ball* and was surprised to learn how PJ & Duncan’s 1990s career was comparatively almost always happening just outside the Top 10, even though I knew future Bunny well by that point. Seems to me that circa 2002 was when A&D really slipped into the omnipresent slot on ITV that led to them being flagship veterans. Of course Saturday Night Takeaway began on 8 June 2002 (the same end-of-week everyhit date listed atop Tom’s review). A couple of months later, I’m a Celebrity would begin. They’d just finished doing CD:UK, SMTV, Pop Idol and BBC’s Friends Like These. A good time to relaunch the pop career if just for a one-off. Am I also right in thinking its the most successful official England song since Three Lions?

*Ant & Dec’s great contribution to the song was the verses. Upon buying a second hand, Premiership-themed compilation years later called Club Hits 98/99 I was surprised to hear an earlier version by ‘The Balls Brothers,’ which presumably came out for the World Cup before This One).

(Irrelevant side-comment: In the video there’s a Tizer sticker on the fridge in the cafe and I seemed to remember someone (possibly me??) making a ‘point’ about this somewhere years ago given that they had just finished presenting the Tizer-sponsored CD:UK half a year earlier).

]]>By: AMZ1981http://freakytrigger.co.uk/popular/2017/11/will-young-light-my-fire/comment-page-1/#comment-2211240
Sat, 18 Nov 2017 13:38:58 +0000http://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=30463#comment-2211240#19 I remember reading somewhere at the time that Paul McCartney wasn’t too happy about Will Young featuring so prominently at the jubilee concert, presumably because he was a flash in the pan reality show winner at what was a major cultural celebration. Whether he’d have taken the same view about Mary Hopkin taking part in a similar event in 1968 is something we can only speculate on.

Another point worth noting about Will Young’s continued success is that it takes reality TV another four years to find a second breakout solo star after a long parade of duds and even she faded after a massively successful first album. If the two bands from 2003/04 (and one was still topping the charts in the second half of the decade, albeit with some chart runs that would have had Iron Maiden wincing) are the ones I’m thinking of then I’ve seen various incarnations of one, the other and both five times.

We’re In The Ball was Ant & Dec’s last single and their biggest hit at the time by far; the eventual bunny only made number 9 first time around and indeed they only grazed the bottom rung of the top ten twice after.